HDI Training and Certification Event to Feature New Course, Updated Curricula Leading To HDA Certification and Private Tours of Leading Support Centers

Business Wire, April 4, 2001

Business Editors and High Tech Writers

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 4, 2001

Help Desk Institute (HDI), a ThinkService professional community and the world's largest membership association for service and support professionals, announced that it will host its next training and certification event at The New Hilton Dallas Park Cities Hotel in Dallas, Texas, May 7th - 11th, 2001.

The training event will feature updated curricula leading to HDI's Help Desk Analyst (HDA) certification. Revised courses include "Essential Skills for Help Desk Analysts" and "Understanding Tools and Techniques for Problem Solving."

In addition, HDI will offer a new course entitled "Survey Design Workshop." Led by Fred Van Bennekom, this new offering will focus on surveys as a valuable tool for understanding customer satisfaction with the service delivery process. Participants will learn the role of surveys within a customer loyalty program, how to identify aspects of the service process to measure through the survey, and critical issues in the construction of valid questions.

Through its respected Training and Certification series, HDI offers a variety of comprehensive two-day and five-day courses that prepare sites for certification, help trainers to become HDI-certified trainers, and assist help desk professionals to improve their skills and successfully complete HDI certification. HDI's courses focus on the objectives for Help Desk Analyst (HDA), Help Desk Support Engineer (HDSE) and Help Desk Manager (HDM).

Additionally, on Wednesday, May 9th, HDI will offer private tours of the support centers at CompuCom Systems, Inc. and Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd. CompuCom Systems, Inc., one of the top-tier IT outsourcing service providers, has mastered the challenges of integrating people, processes and technology into a leveraged and scalable help desk solutions infrastructure. This enables CompuCom to provide help desk services with a level of quality, efficiency and flexibility beyond what most IT departments can provide with solely internal resources. Its Enterprise Help Desk is award winning and best practices certified for three consecutive years.

Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd. offers firewall technologies and Secure Virtual Network products, and protects and manages the corporate assets of the majority of Fortune 100 and other leading companies and government agencies across the globe. Check Point's Technical Assistance Center (TAC) provides first, second and third level technical support to both Check Point customers and distributors. The members of the TAC are highly skilled network engineers who provide support on sophisticated and complex products. The group has grown from about 20 engineers only 18 months ago to a headcount of approximately 80 today, and the company expects that growth to continue. To ease its growing pains, the TAC is installing several new support tools and is completing the second phase of a re-engineering program. In addition to the Technical Assistance Center, Check Point also has a Customer Advocacy Group that offers customer service, licensing support and account management. These agents assist customers and partners with their support licensing issues and work to ensure the customer's overall satisfaction with services they receive from Check Point.

"HDI's Regional Training program and these exclusive tour opportunities provide support professionals with extremely valuable and highly targeted opportunities to learn from other support industry experts, network with their peers, and see the delivery of excellent customer support in action," stated Ron Muns, founder and CEO, Help Desk Institute.

For more information or to register, call Help Desk Institute at 1-800-248-5667 or visit www.thinkhdi.com.

About Help Desk Institute

Help Desk Institute's mission is to lead the customer support profession worldwide by setting the standards, establishing certification and training programs, and providing access to industry resources. HDI provides targeted information about the technologies, tools, and trends of the help desk and customer support industry. HDI sponsors its Annual Conference and Expo, as well as the i-Support Symposium and Expo, offers training and certification, and publishes a wide range of training publications and research materials. Membership exceeds 25,000 with members from every continent worldwide. To become a member, or to obtain further information on the benefits of becoming a member, please visit the HDI web site at www.thinkhdi.com.

About ThinkService

ThinkService was formed in 1999 with the merger of UK-based Customer Service Management (CSM) Group and Colorado Springs-based Help Desk Institute, thus forming the world's largest membership and subscription organization for customer service and support professionals. ThinkService was founded to build and serve professional communities by providing a wealth of valuable resources including membership services, web-based services, publications, conferences, training and certification programs, and industry research to a number of related communities in the service and support industry. For more information, visit www.thinkservice.com.